While Jay McKinnon was on an American road trip, opendna was "outed" (sic) and accused of counterfeiting a birth certificate for a United States Senator Barack Obama. This diary is dedicated to Jeniffer, an enthusiastic and hopeful voice and the first person to ask me to explain the very weird things being said about Jay McKinnon.

"I believe that there is overwhelming evidence, which establishes beyond a reasonable doubt, that Senator Obama is a natural born US Citizen, and that he has acted in good faith to establish this fact. I have no evidence to contradict that belief, have not seen any, and do not believe any exists. I have been libeled by humorless fools trying to look clever on the internet." - Jay McKinnon

The following is the transcript of an interview conducted on July 4th 2008.

I need somebody to check out this screen capture from CNN.com and tell me what they see. (source) Am I having visual hallucinations that shift colors? Is my memory faulty?

Maybe I haven't slept, and maybe I'm wearing a new glasses, and maybe I've had too much coffee or there's some weird chemical imbalance messing with my color perception, but...

I could have sworn we already dealt with changing Sen. Obama's skin color once in this primary season and I'd bet dollars to Dunkin' Donuts that's what I'm seeing.

One of WayneNight's comments jogged college-days memory of the Students For a Free Tibet campaign to keep the Olympics out of China. The local chapter of SFT had been very successful in earlier actions and had shown solidarity for a great many other social justice causes. "One good turn..."

Below is an email I sent July 5th 2001, eight days before the IOC selected China as host of the 2008 Olympics. The recipient of the email was Mrs. Charmaine Crooks, Canada's representative on the International Olympic Committee, who (IIRC) hailed from British Columbia.

I hate being right.

"Debunking" chain emails isn't exactly a fresh topic for a diary, and rarely does any good. "Even when someone is corrected, said [psychology professor Nicholas] DiFonzo, they're unlikely to make a point of sending out a retraction, because it's embarrassing to admit to all your friends and family that you sent them something bogus. The result is that while rumours spread exponentially through networks of people, the information necessary to debunk them does not."(Vancouver Sun)

That said, the practice of debunking/fisking forces us to look for facts and possibly even learn a thing or two. I warmed up this morning learning about oil, NAFTA, foreign aid, international relations, Social Security and fiscal responsibility...

The Senator from New York won tonight, and there's been all kinds of hoopla about some tears or something. Women broke for HRC (47 percent) and the "tears" supposedly polled well with men.(?)

After all the diaries around here, I frankly had no idea what was going on. So I headed over to CNN for some video of the "tears".

And, bewildered, watched Hillary Clinton channel Maryscott O'Connor.

Today's silly flurry of press releases and subsequent nashing of gums and fingers has reminded me of a pernicious political truism that college students should probably have dropped in their ears:

Campaign workers aren't looking out for your best interests.

Obama is encouraging students to register where they study so they can caucus where they study. Dodd and Clinton are implying fraud, dilluion of a caucus of 'Real Iowans' and other unsavory tactics. That's been covered.

What I haven't seen is a warning to students who might change their registration, and the personal clusterpunk they can bring down upon themselves by doing so.

Ten Words

Not just obstruction of justice,
conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Impeach.

Meditate on a user name: CanYouBeAngryAndStillDream

New Rule

If any Representative, Senator, candidate, or party official shows up to post something here in the next several days/weeks, point them to [an impeachment] diary unless they say the "I" word. - Phoenix Rising

That's right, Say The F*****g Word!. (Turkana)

...

Now with lolcat afternoon activities! Rescue someone's diary!

Today, July first, is Canada Day. Similar in festivities to the Fourth of July, Canada Day marks the passage of the British North America Act in 1867 that Canada became a confederation and the official end of colonial rule. Originally established as Dominion Day it was renamed with the passage of the Canada Act 1982.

...

I'm a lousy historian but I suspect the future of Canadian politics probably has it's origin in a beer commercial. When I was a little kid I lived in the shadow of a Molson brewery, so I make no apologies if this looks like a beer commercial.

(Not dial-up safe!)

During the Seattle WTO protests, in 1999, the phrase "Turtles & Teamsters, Together At Last" (and variations) jumped from protest sign to guiding philosophy. It symbolically described hundreds of thousands Sierra Club activists (who dressed as sea turtles) and union members who marched to demand that human and environmental concerns be included in discussions of global Free Trade regimes.

"Turtles & Teamsters" also put a name to the increasingly common alliances between environmentalists and labor unions, which were no longer willing to accept that protecting the environment and jobs were mutually exclusive conditions. That potent alliance has formed around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and offers both hope and dangers.

For a young punk like me there's nothing quite as irritating as seeing this country fight battles my parents fought when they were my age and seeing us poorer in the present. Whenever the casket is nailed shut on a leader of that era there’s an orgy of historical revisionism, and we become poorer still. The funeral becomes a forum for self-serving political proclamations.

I’m ranting, of course, of the public ceremonies for President Ford.

Today’s Beltway villains have gathered about his refrigerated corpse to say thanks for clearing their path to power, and to rehabilitate his act of partisan weakness into a categorical imperative. They wish to enshrine not a President, but a precedent. Today they talk about how he healed a nation and tomorrow they’ll defend their own treason by pointing to Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon.

It's a strange thing to go to a debate in Orange County, and discover the Democratic candidate has the home field advantage...

This diary is re-posted from Long Beach Politics. Also see atdnext's CA-46: The Brandt-Rohrabacher Debate at Golden West. Jim Brandt's campaign site and ActBlue page. Also see Rohrabacher Cuts and Runs on the OC Weekly's blotter.

A lot of this diary is lifted from Friends4Brandt.com, which means it was written by [REDACTED]. Brandt's campaign is making this easy for bloggers, and they're going to make it even easier for anyone who loves to hate Dana Rohrabacher.

Jim Brandt made his money in software and his volunteers are building tools. If you get agitated that the DNC doesn't roll out the same voter ID technology that the GOP does - if you salivated over the SEIU's demonstration at YearlyKos - you're going to love this DIY campaign.

You can help win back Orange County without leaving your living room. But that's another diary, first let's introduce...

2006 is an election year. It's an election year in which damn near everything hangs in the balance. We have the war in Iraq, crooked military contractors, record trade deficits and record budget deficits. We have illegal wiretapping of American citizens, legalizing torture and war crimes, the suspension of habeas corpus and the end of trial-by-jury. We have the overt subversion of the US Constitution by the President of the United States, rubber-stamped by the Republican Congress.

If you don't have an opinion this year, you probably never will.

In the Old Country, we have a saying: "When you have a problem, throw a party." Right on. You and your friends are invited to my first political fundraiser. In Long Beach, California.

This particular blograiser is of the "No Refuge for Republicans" variety, raising money for both Brian Keeler and Jim Brandt (CA-46).

I tacked Brandt onto this local event because (1) he's running in the Blue Nile's district, (2) he's in desperate need of cash, and (3) I firmly believe in contesting every race, coast to coast, until we drive this mutant Republican philosophy into the ground and mark it with a radioactive tombstone to warn of 1000 generations. We probably won't win CA-46, but I have a patriotic duty to help buy Brandt the bullets he needs for his insurgency against a Republican stronghold. Details below the fold.

It starts like this:

I am an honest-to-goodness Marin County hot-tub-er. I'm a latte-sipping liberal. I smoke, I drink, I have sex out of wedlock. I think gay and lesbian couples are cute and I advocate inter-racial parentage as a solution to racism. I have a dream, and it's Pat Buchanan's nightmare. I'm from San Francisco.

The recent wave of security breaches occurring under the Republican government cumulatively represent an attack on the identity and financial security of around 10% of the American population (so far this year). These security lapses and breaches have exposed taxpayers to a statutory minimum $26 billion in liability. Al Qaeda ain't got nothin' on that.

The trend-line of security lapses long ago passed from embarrassing thru unacceptable and inexcusable to criminally incompetent in some kind of geometric climb toward a Crime Against God And Humanity. There is considerable reasoned argument that we've broken the treason barrier several times and are now traveling at the criminal equivalent of Mach 4.

UPDATE [8/30/06]: It doesn't stop. I'll keep adding to the list.

UPDATE [9/11/06]: TSA: another $1,200,000.

Below the fold: regularly updated graphs showing vote tallies at different points during the count.

UPDATE: the graphs are being updated but the vote count is slowing down towards the end. Also, it was suggested that we use this link to minimize database load from all the comments. BTW, I'm updating the image on a personal host, not updating the diary itself.

"California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming," said Gov. Schwarzenegger.  "Today, we are taking an unprecedented step by signing an agreement between California and the United Kingdom." LBreport

U.S. Const. art. I, § 10: No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation... No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state...